Elephant
by rijujuju
Summary: Hiroto's shoulders slumped. He didn't even get maternity leave. What was the point of laying an egg if you didn't get maternity leave? Life just wasn't fair. / Hiroto lays an egg. What it says on the tin.


"Well," Hiroto said, "This is interesting."

'This' was a large, blue egg, much like a robins egg, sitting in his bed. He was the only one at home, and Midorikawa was the only one that had the key. He highly doubted that Midorikawa would put a large blue egg in his bed when he was sleeping. It was a very un-Midorikawa-like thing to do.

The first thing he did was call Burn.

"What, Hiro, I'm—"

"Did you put an egg in my pants?" Hiroto asked, calmly. Burn was quiet for .2 seconds before bursting into laughter. Hiroto hung up.

At work, Midorikawa just looked confused.

"Hiroto, why are you carrying an egg in a baby carrier?" he asked. Hiroto patted the thing strapped to his chest.

"I woke up with this in my pants." he told him. Midorikawa blinked. He stared.

"You… woke up with it in your pants." he said, flatly. "Hiroto, did… Did you and Fubuki stay up drinking? Because the last time you did that, you were convinced that you here Hikari—"

"No," Hiroto cut him off and walked into his office. "I just woke up, and it was in my pants. So I'm holding onto it."

Midorikawa stared after him, and was about to tell him that that /really/ was not the normal reaction to waking up with an egg in your pants. Then he sighed, rolled his eyes, and turned to the phone. Maybe Endou would know what to do.

—

Endou did not know what to do.

"Did you lay it?" he asked Hiroto, looking up from his ramen. "I heard that that's a thing, now. People laying eggs."

"Girls lay eggs all the time, I think." Midorikawa added, tapping his chopsticks against his bowl. "I didn't know boys laid eggs."

"That's birds." Hiroto informed his assistant. Endou silently wondered if Natsumi would ever lay an egg. That would be weird.

"Can you eat it?" he asked, leaning in to inspect the egg. Hiroto looked scandalized and pulled it away.

"You aren't eating my egg!"

"So you admit it's yours?"

"That's besides the point!"

"You just called it your egg, so…"

"My egg or not, you're not eating it! That's murder!"

Midorikawa was silent as they argued, looking through his phone. He had googled how to incubate an egg, thinking of a children's book he had read once where an elephant sat on an egg until it hatched a baby elephant. He hoped Hiroto's egg wouldn't hatch a baby elephant. They didn't have space for that.

"How long will it take to hatch?" Endou was asking, leaning in to inspect it. "Nine months?"

"Hiroto isn't sitting on an egg for nine months, he has work to do!" Midorikawa scowled, shutting his phone and turning to finish his noodles. "He sits on his ass enough, he doesn't need to add an egg to the mixture."

"You're the reason my egg is going to die." Hiroto told him, frowning down at said egg. It was such a pretty blue color.

Endou stared between them for a few minutes, concentrating. Finally, he spoke up.

"Hiroto, who fertilized your egg?"

Midorikawa spit the entire contents of his bowl onto Endou. Hiroto looked scandalized. Well. That answered that.

—

They went baby clothes shopping.

"If it's actually an elephant, none of these will fit." Hiroto sighed, looking down at their shopping cart. The top shirt was a pink fuzzy sweater, reading "DADDY'S LITTLE GIRL". "If it's a boy elephant, I'll be even more upset."

"I don't think the elephant will care." Midorikawa informed him, dropping a shirt printed with trains into the cart.

"We'll have to move, if it's an elephant…" The redhead took off his glasses to clean them, sighing. There was at least four hundred dollars in baby clothes in their cart. That was ridiculous. He wondered if they would have to sew them all together to cover their poor elephant child.

"It's not going to be an elephant, Hiroto." Midorikawa rolled his eyes. "Besides, in the book, it was a tiny elephant. A big elephant won't come out of an egg that small. Idiot."

Great. Their child would have attitude problems, too. Hiroto rubbed his temples. He was glad they had left the egg at home, incubating in the microwave (because what else would you use for something that big?) because he didn't want his egg-child to see him like this.

"Should we have a baby shower?" he finally asked, and Midorikawa paused.

"…You're all booked with appointments this month. You'll have to have the baby shower with the company party."

Hiroto's shoulders slumped. He didn't even get maternity leave. What was the point of laying an egg if you didn't get maternity leave? Life just wasn't fair.

—

As it turned out, they never got their baby shower, or the company party. Midorikawa and Hiroto were upstairs, arguing over whether to paint the baby room yellow or blue, when Burn called them downstairs.

There was a baby sitting in the microwave.

"I just wanted to make a hot pocket," he told them. "I'm not one to educate you guys on dietary choices, but this is fucked up."

Burn left, without his hot pocket, and Hiroto picked up the baby. He looked at it. The baby looked back.

"…I want to name him Masaki." Midorikawa told him. "It's a good name. Masaki."

The baby didn't look happy at that. The baby didn't really look happy at anything, really. Then again, Hiroto decided, he probably wouldn't be happy if he woke up in a microwave, either.

"Alright. Masaki." He nodded. Midorikawa kissed his cheek. The baby scowled at them.

The room ended up being painted purple.


End file.
